TV's Zachary Quinto Will Join Billy Porter in Angels in America Revival

By Andrew Gans
and Kenneth Jones
04 Jun 2010

Zachary Quinto
Zachary Quinto

Zachary Quinto — best known for his roles as Sylar on TV's "Heroes" and Spock in the 2009 "Star Trek" film — has been cast in the first New York City revival of Tony Kushner's epic Angels in America, according to the New York Times.

Quinto will play the role of Louis Ironson — the part created on Broadway by Tony-winning director/actor Joe Mantello — in Signature Theatre Company's revival of the Tony Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-honored Part 1 (Millennium Approaches) and Part 2 (Perestroika) of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.

Quinto joins the previously reported Billy Porter (Grease!, Miss Saigon, Smokey Joe's Café) who told a recent crowd at Joe's Pub that he will play AIDS nurse Belize, the former drag queen originated on Broadway by Tony winner Jeffrey Wright.

The Times also reports that Broadway favorite Christian Borle (Legally Blonde the Musical, Spamalot) is currently in negotiations to play the role of Prior Walter, a gay man struggling with AIDS. Tony winner Stephen Spinella created that role in the original Broadway production.

Michael Greif will direct the upcoming Manhattan revival; the parts will run in repertory Sept. 14–Dec. 19 at The Peter Norton Space on West 42nd Street.

Signature Theatre has not officially announced any casting for Angels in America.

Angels in America, according to Signature, "is set in late 1985 and early 1986, as the first wave of the AIDS epidemic in America is escalating and Ronald Reagan has been elected to a second term in the White House. The play's two parts…bring together a young gay man with AIDS and his frightened, unfaithful lover; a closeted Mormon lawyer and his valium-addicted wife; the infamous New York lawyer Roy Cohn; an African-American male nurse; a Mormon housewife from Utah; and a steel-winged, prophecy-bearing angel; as well as the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, an ancient rabbi, the world's oldest living Bolshevik and a Reagan administration functionary, among many others — all played by a company of eight actors. The lives of these disparate characters intersect, intertwine, collide and are blown apart during a time of heartbreak, reaction and transformation. Ranging from earth to heaven, from the political to the intimate to the visionary and supernatural, Angels in America is an epic exploration of love, justice, identity and theology, of the difficulty, terror and necessity of change."

Angels in America was one of the most critically acclaimed plays of the 1990s and established Tony Kushner as a major new voice in world theatre. The plays were developed in productions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, before opening on Broadway in 1993. Both parts won Tony Awards in 1993 and 1994 for Best Play, and Millennium Approaches won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Kushner adapted the plays for an HBO mini-series, directed by Mike Nichols, which premiered in 2003 and won Golden Globe and Emmy Awards for Best Miniseries.